Monthly Archives: May 2019

Reporting on the UN’s Global Assessment Report the BBC states that between 1980 and 2000, 100 million hectares of tropical forest were lost, mainly from cattle ranching in South America and palm oil plantations in South East Asia. Faring worse than forests are wetlands, with only 13% of those present in 1700 still in existence in the year 2000. The Pennine PeatLIFE project is making a positive difference by restoring wetlands in the UK.

Conservation bodies active in peatland restoration across the
UK were in Westminster this week to explain the vital role of their work in the
fight to slow climate change.

A week after 16-year-old climate change activist Greta
Thunberg took her environmental message to Westminster, a group of
organisations met MPs and Peers to highlight the valuable public benefits of
healthy peatlands and how restoring and protecting them can help to tackle
catastrophic climate change.

Pennine PeatLIFE, a major peatland conservation project led by the North
Pennines Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) Partnership in collaboration
with Yorkshire Wildlife Trust and Forest of Bowland AONB Partnership, hosted
the parliamentary reception on Tuesday 30 April. The reception was co-ordinated
by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) UK Peatland
Programme, and brought together partnerships working across the UK,
representing a wealth of expertise and over 100,000 hectares of restored peatlands.

Julian Sturdy MP (York Outer) and Rishi Sunak MP (Richmond)
sponsored the event and talked about their visits to Pennine PeatLIFE sites in
their own constituencies.

Environment Minister, Thérèse
Coffey said:

“I was delighted to speak to the Pennine PeatLIFE event. The
UK’s three million hectares of peatlands are an invaluable resource in our
natural environment, providing carbon storage, clean water, flood mitigation,
natural habitats, and land for agriculture and recreation.

“Four large-scale peatland projects across England are
benefitting from £10 million of Defra funding, to restore over 6,000 hectares
of degraded peatland between now and March 2021. It was great to see the fruits
of that investment and meet some of the people behind this essential work.”

The undervalued moorland landscape of upland areas of the UK
can capture and store vast amounts of carbon, locking it in to stop it
contributing to further climate change. However if they are left to degrade,
peatlands will release their stored carbon into the atmosphere. Dried-out,
damaged peat is also vulnerable to fire, as can be seen with the wildfires that
have taken hold on moors across the country.

Public benefits of healthy peatlands are not restricted to
tackling climate change. 70% of our drinking water comes from upland
catchments, they host internationally important biodiversity of plants and
animals, and they ‘slow the flow’ of water which can reduce the impact of
flooding.

Rob Stoneman, Chair of Pennine PeatLIFE, said: “With the
industrial revolution the UK began what Greta Thunberg refers to as a
‘mind-blowing historical carbon debt.’ We think that we should be leading a new
industrial revolution, one that reduces emissions and addresses climate change
as the biggest challenge humanity has ever faced. Healthy peatlands are central
to this climate change revolution, and we must continue to invest in their
conservation.”

Rob Brown, owner of Howesyke Farm in the Yorkshire Dales
National Park, spoke about his experience as a landowner: “On my farm 950 acres
of peatland have been restored for the public benefit. Thousands of tonnes of
CO2 have been saved from entering the atmosphere and downstream the
benefits include cleaner water and reduced impact of flooding.

“We need to create more opportunities for land managers to
undertake peatland restoration and support the delivery organisations, such as
AONB and National Park teams, through blended public, private and charitable
funding solutions.”

Paul Leadbitter, Peatland Programme Manager at the North
Pennines AONB Partnership, said: “What many people see when they look at our
moorlands are vast expanses of a harsh and relatively inaccessible habitat,
seemingly without much growing there. However these peatlands and the plants that
grow on them are the engines of carbon storage in our upland landscape.”

Pennine PeatLIFE is funded by the EU LIFE programme with
match funding from Yorkshire Water, United Utilities, Northumbrian Water and
the Environment Agency. The North Pennines AONB Partnership and IUCN UK
Peatland Programme have also received funding from innovative funders and
grant-makers such as the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation to further develop peat
restoration programmes in the UK.

The UK Peatland Strategy sets out an ambitious target of two
million hectares of peatland in good condition, under restoration or being
sustainably managed by 2040.

IUCN UK Peatland Programme Director, Clifton Bain, said:
“There is great momentum and expertise in the UK peatland sector and we have
made real progress towards our targets. Long-term funding is needed to maintain
this momentum and realise the many benefits healthy peatlands provide us with.

“The United Nations General Assembly has declared the next
decade the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration. Restoring degraded ecosystems is
a proven measure to tackle climate change and the peatland community in the UK
can help meet this commitment through innovative restoration practices and its
established ethos of partnership working.”